Fig. 3

Expression analysis of COX-2 and iNOS in MAC-T cells. Cells were incubated with 1 μg/mL lipopolysaccharide (LPS) in combination with 20 μg/mL dexamethasone (DEX) or isoliquiritigenin (ISL) at 2.5, 5 and 10 μg/mL for 24 h. With β-actin as an endogenous control, real-time PCR and ELISA were used to detect mRNA (A and B) and protein (C and D) levels, respectively. Values represent the means ± SEM of four independent experiments. In the above bars, ** indicate significance at P < 0.01 between the control and the LPS treatment without DEX and ISL. Among LPS in combination with DEX and ISL treatments, the same letters indicate P > 0.05; different lowercase letters indicate P < 0.05 while different uppercase letters indicate P < 0.01